Web hosting providers have an opportunity to partner with CDN operators like Akamai to differentiate their services by providing faster loading times that lead to increased revenue and conversion rates.

Leighton and Sagan will remain Akamai directors, and Sagan will become a senior advisor to the company, working with Leighton on business strategy and to ensure a seamless management transition.

Though many industry analysts have said the appointment is a stronge move for Akamai, analyst Stifel Nicolaus pointed ou that while Leighton lacks the experience of serving in a public company CEO position, decision to remain on as a senior advisor could be helpful on this front. is arguably the best bet for CEO, considering he co founded Akamai in 1998, transforming the Internet startup to a leading cloud infrastructure services platform.

Since then, he has been responsible for the company technology vision and has served as one of the principal architects of strategic direction while serving as chief scientist, a member of the senior executive team, and a member of the board of directors.

He has played an integral role in shaping the roadmap for many of Akamai key product innovations, strategic accomplishments, and technological breakthroughs, including site and application acceleration, web security and cloud infrastructure services.

we began evaluating our options for the next CEO of Akamai, our objective was simply to have the best possible leadership team in place for continued growth and innovation in the years ahead, and that what we doing with Tom appointment, said Martin Coyne II, lead director of Akamai board. conducted an exhaustive review of the company strategy and opportunities as we evaluated a broad range of potential candidates. We are confident that naming Tom is the best and most natural evolution of management responsibility at Akamai. to founding Akamai, Leighton was a Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT and a member of MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

From 2003 to 2005, Leighton served on the President Information Technology Advisory Committee, during which time he chaired the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity.

He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Akamai also announced it will host an investor summit at the Boston Marriott Cambridge on March 11, 2013, where the company will present key Akamai priorities, product roadmaps and insights into major IT trends related to security, cloud computing, mobile, video, and big data.

CDN Akamai has had a strong year of expansion and growth, having acquired content acceleration software companies, Verivue and FastSoft.

Earlier this year, CDN Akamai Technologies named Jim Ebzery senior vice president and general manager of the Americas.

Talk Back: Do you think that Dr. Leighton was the best choice to lead Akamai as CEO? Is there anyone else currently working at CDN Akamai who you feel would have been a stronger choice for CEO? Are you currently partnering with a CDN to provide its value add services? Let us know in the comments section. Sagan, currently president, will also be appointed to the board of directors, while still continuing to hold the position of president. Read More